Advanced TV (ATV) is here and it is taking advertising to the next level. The convergence between traditional and digital environments is providing advertisers with new opportunities to reach consumers in increasingly relevant ways across all environments.
What exactly is advanced TV?
Advanced TV is television that delivers customized messaging and data targeting, similar to digital advertising, but from the consumer’s perspective, it looks exactly like a traditional TV experience with long-form content and intermittent commercials. A key component of advanced TV is the ability to apply data to target and serve ads to an individual household, device, or consumer.
Advanced TV solutions — which include over-the-top (OTT) video inclusive of connected TV (CTV), data-driven linear TV, and addressable TV — enable advertisers to make real-time, data-driven decisions while dynamically inserting ads into programming.
While advanced TV capabilities have existed for many years, the dramatic growth in streaming consumption, new addressable inventory, and programmatic technology for linear environments have resulted in the maturation of advanced TV. Linear budgets are quickly shifting into advanced TV solutions.
6 Advanced TV facts advertisers should know
Here are a few things to keep in mind as you consider adding advanced TV to your next plan.
- Advanced TV uses impressions to measure delivery against an audience and provides a common currency for buying. Since advanced TV solutions use impressions instead of GRPs, it provides a common currency for buying across all video solutions. Advertisers can look at delivery holistically across all their video buys.
- Data is at the core of advanced TV and is essential to delivering ads to your target audience as well as measuring campaign outcomes. Advertisers can leverage a wide variety of data sets that can be used for advanced TV targeting. By utilizing subscriber data, first-party data, or third-party data, advertisers can reach consumers in real time. Data helps provide campaign insights in-flight or after a campaign concludes, enabling advertisers to tie back outcomes or behaviors to a viewer who has seen your ad. ATV’s ability to influence behavior and find audiences that can drive your business forward is one of its greatest strengths.
- Programmatic solutions and technology standardizations are unlocking the full potential of advanced TV. Programmatic technology — which is a digital process that uses algorithms to automate and improve the efficiency of ad buys — is now being added to set-top boxes and smart TV operating systems to make ad delivery and measurement more seamless. Programmatic also makes it easier for advertisers to transact and activate advanced TV campaigns. Several industry initiatives, including Project OAR and OpenAP, are working to standardize technology in order to improve and scale advanced TV solutions and capabilities.
- Advanced TV enables more relevant and personalized ads, resulting in a better viewing experience for consumers. Dynamic ad insertion (DAI) is the technology that allows advertisers to swap out ad creatives in programming. Advertisers can use different creatives to deliver relevant ads to households, devices, or consumers. Project OAR is developing technology that allows programmers and advertisers to replace linear ads within a national, local, or promotional ad break with dynamic, customizable messaging tailored to specific audiences.
- Since there are multiple ways to access and purchase an addressable ad spot, it’s essential to work with a trusted partner who unifies fragmented sources of addressable inventory. Carriage agreements, which determine where and how content is distributed, broadcasted, and monetized, have created a complex and convoluted buying environment. A true advanced TV partner should provide a unified source of supply to help advertisers easily move spend between channels, effectively manage sequential messaging, and manage frequency controls.
- All advertisers, from legacy brands to smaller local advertisers, can benefit from advanced TV inventory and solutions, no matter their goals. Targeting capabilities within ATV enable advertisers to efficiently reach their on-target audience at a hyperlocal or national scale. Advanced TV influences the audience at all stages of the consumer journey. Adding advanced TV to media plans can stretch the value of working media dollars and help improve efficiency to your overall video buy.
Linear television is entering a new era. The convergence between traditional and digital environments is happening now. Advanced TV provides targeted delivery, efficient campaigns, and measurable results. Take the SpotX University course Advanced TV for Advertisers to learn more about how you can accelerate your TV plans and unlock new opportunities to efficiently reach your consumers on the biggest screen at home.
As Marketing Manager, Dani Whelan develops and executes industry-leading marketing and sales enablement solutions that positively impact SpotX’s client relationships and revenue growth. Prior to joining SpotX, she spent time in agency roles planning and executing cross-channel and addressable TV campaigns for a wide variety of clients. Outside of work, you can usually find her taking advantage of living in her new home, Denver, by exploring, hiking, or snowboarding. 
